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“I don’t see how Awakening Together: The Spiritual Practice of Inclusivity and Community could be better. It is so wise, thoughtful, and dedicated to our healthful growth, ease, and enlightenment through the Dharma that I know I will be reading it for years to come. Larry Yang seems to have thought of everything we will need as we venture bravely forward—through racism, prejudice, ignorance, and poor home training—into the free spiritual beings we were meant to be. Together.”—Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple

“Larry Yang’s voice, heart, and insight in Awakening Together can be both trusted and radically illuminating. I highly recommend this elegant, highly personal, and hopefully profoundly influential book.”—Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Full Catastrophe Living

“What a gift Awakening Together (a timely and essential offering) gives, to learn how, through the lessons of past experience and the lens of future needs, we can build sanghas that represent the illuminating and joyous presence that true diversity brings. ”—Gina Sharpe, Co-Founder, New York Insight Meditation Center

“Awakening Together combines the intimately personal, the Buddhist and universal into a loving, courageous, important work that will benefit all who read it. For anyone who longs to collaborate and create a just and inclusive community, Larry provides a brilliant guidebook.”—Jack Kornfield, author of A Path With Heart

“Essential reading as we seek to heal our own hearts, our communities, and our world.”—Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance

“A marvelous book, unstoppable in its promise. The integrity and timeliness of Larry Yang’s teaching has the power of an incoming tide.”—Joanna Macy, author of Coming Back to Life

“Awakening Together is the best book ever written on Buddhist inclusivity, both racially and sexually.”—The Bay Area Reporter

Wed, 05/03/2017 - 10:16 -- landerson

How can we connect our personal spiritual journeys with the larger course of our shared human experience? How do we compassionately and wisely navigate belonging and exclusion in our own hearts? And how can we embrace diverse identities and experiences within our spiritual communities, building sanghas that make good on the promise of liberation for everyone?

If you aren’t sure how to start this work, Awakening Together is for you. If you’ve begun but aren’t sure what the next steps are, this book is for you. If you’re already engaged in this work, this book will remind you none of us do this work alone. Whether you find yourself at the center or at the margins of your community, whether you’re a community member or a community leader, this book is for you.

From the foreword by Jan Willis:

“Especially in times like these, fraught on every side with threats from racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, and anti-queer bias, a welcoming and safe space for meditation practice is the most kind and compassionate thing we can create for each other. And yet, in Dharma settings, people [with marginalized identifies] feel, in Larry’s words, ‘unattended, unloved, unseen, and even harmed.’

Awakening Together provides us with a detailed, step-by-step blueprint of the hard work involved in creating and maintaining a diverse community and, in doing so, shows us how we can begin and continue to build an inclusive sangha.

If you are ready to commit to the idea that we, as a diverse group of Buddhists, ought to be able to awaken together, and to honor and share all of what and who we are in the process, then take up this book, Larry’s loving clarion call. Consciously, mindfully, read Awakening Together with openness and with joy.”